Department of Water Resources
A daily compilation for DWR personnel of significant news articles and comment
January 4, 2008
1. Top Items
Low snowpack to get boost - Contra Costa Times
Fierce storms bearing down; High winds, levee threat and blizzard alerts have area on edge - Stockton Record
Water officials measure Sierra snow - ABC News Channel 7
Low snowpack to get boost
Contra Costa Times – 1/4/07
By Mike Taugher, staff writer
The Sierra snowpack was well below average during the first snow survey of the year Thursday, but a series of storms is expected to bring a major boost by the end of the weekend.
The survey comes as water officials across the state are braced for what may be their most challenging year in a long time, thanks to a dry 2007 and a landmark court decision that could significantly cut into Delta water deliveries.
The survey, which took place before the first of the storms arrived, placed the snowpack at 60 percent to 70 percent of average in four locations. State water officials said the storms would probably increase the snowpack to a little above average for this time of year.
"We're quite optimistic based on the forecast that there will be a major addition," state hydrologist Maury Roos said.
The survey is the first of the year and comes nearly halfway through the water year, which began Oct. 1.
Across
The reason for those actions lies in a combination of the weather and an environmental collapse in the Delta, the hub of the state's water delivery system.
Last year was dry throughout
Not so this year. Instead of storage at 20 percent above normal, as it was a year ago, the state's reservoirs are nearly 20 percent below normal today.
That means there is less water in reserve to make up for low snowfall, should 2008 turn out to be a dry year.
Despite the storms, that remains a possibility.
La Nina conditions have set in, with cooler ocean temperatures off the coast of
Precipitation in the central and northern Sierra is harder to predict.
Complicating matters is a court order, finalized last month, that spells out a series of restrictions that state and federal water managers must follow to protect threatened Delta smelt.
The court order means that heavy storms cannot change the "five-year situation that we're in," said Laura King Moon, assistant general manager of the State Water Contractors, an association of major water agencies in the state.
"Most of our member agencies are asking their customers to cut back on their water use," she said. "You'll see that continuing all through the next year, whether or not storms come through."
U. S. District Judge Oliver Wanger imposed the measures after ruling this past spring that federal regulators had failed to protect Delta smelt and that the fish could go extinct. The first of those pumping reductions began Dec. 28, and further reductions could occur between now and June.
State water officials say the pumping cutbacks could reduce water supplies 7 percent to 22 percent in a dry year, and 22 percent to 30 percent in average years.
That means water agencies will have less Delta water available for delivery to customers, so they will have to rely more on conservation and on drought reserves. It also means that in an average year or a wet year, water agencies will have a harder time replenishing reservoirs and aquifers to guard against future droughts.
"It will affect our ability to withstand long-term drought or even short-term drought," said Jerry Johns, deputy director of the state Department of Water Resources.
In the East Bay, the Contra Costa Water District's Los Vaqueros Reservoir is below normal, and other federally owned reservoirs it relies on are also well below normal. The East Bay Municipal Utility District, which owns reservoirs in the Sierra and in the Bay Area, also has a little less water in storage than normal.
The Zone 7 Water District, which serves
In Southern California, water agencies are less dependent on the Delta watershed, but another of the region's major water sources -- the
"They're getting squeezed on both sides," Johns said. #
Fierce storms bearing down; High winds, levee threat and blizzard alerts have area on edge
By Alex Breitler, staff writer
Get ready for the wettest and windiest weather in years as a trio of powerful storms rumbles into the region.
Wind gusts will range from 50 to 60 mph today in the
That's easily strong enough to break or uproot trees, peel loose shingles from rooftops and damage boats moored at marinas
"If you haven't taken down your Christmas decorations, you'll be taking them off your neighbor's roof," said Ron Baldwin,
And don't even think about traveling to the
Ironically, state officials did head to the hills on Thursday for the first of a series of snowpack surveys. Their findings - the snowpack measured about 60 percent to 70 percent of normal - are likely obsolete by this morning.
And that's the good news from this gale:
"Depending on what this series of storms brings, we could be up to normal" by weekend's end, said Frank Gehrke, who heads up the Department of Water Resources' snow survey program. "Even if they don't produce, there's still a lot of winter left to go."
It's been at least five years since
But such storms are not unprecedented.
In 1967, the city got 3.01 inches of rain in just 24 hours, a record for January.
This time, relatively low snow levels means less runoff from the mountains and little risk of rivers flooding,
Still, patrols of Delta levees are planned,
"It's a big storm, and it's out of the ordinary," he said. "I don't think it's a crisis."
Much of the state's focus is on burn-ravaged
Officials on Thursday afternoon said they were mobilizing crews and equipment just in case.
Back in
"You get multiple storm fronts coupled with rain, and the ground gets saturated, and you've got that really strong wind," Tam said. "It's pretty severe for us."
Ski resorts bragged Thursday of the impending white-out.
At Kirkwood Mountain Resort up Highway 88 east of Stockton, communications manager Daniel Pistoresi said he recommended skiers come Thursday while the roads were still passable.
Sometimes these winter storms are overhyped, Pistoresi said. But it seems these are for real.
"(Forecasters) are guaranteeing feet, not inches, of snow," he said. "That would just really put us over the top." #
http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080104/A_NEWS/801040317
Water officials measure Sierra snow
ABC News Channel 7 – 1/3/08
By Wayne Freedman
The snow flurries began to fall in
They are expecting a blizzard through the weekend, and the other good news is that
It's an old Pony Express stop along highway 50, a place called Phillips Station best known for a vacant field, where five times a year at precisely 50 foot intervals a team from
"This kind of keeps us going, I mean, this is what we live for," said Frank Gherke from the California Department of Water Resources.
Frank Gherke and David Art will never be household names, but their work is part of a long scientific record.
David Art, California Department of Water Resources: "I believe there was one year when we had ten feet."
ABC7's Wayne Freedman: "What's the least?"
David Art: "Bare, nothing at all."
It's not the significance of this one snow course, but 270 of them across the sierra. Data collected and compared across decades. It's not a question of snow depth, but water content.
"The only way the data makes sense is to measure the water content, year after year," said Art.
Especially in a year when
Today's readings: 28 inches of snow.
"Well, if all this snow were to melt, we would have about seven inches on the ground," said Frank Gherke from the California Department of Water Resources.
That's about 60-percent of the average for this date. But with a large storm approaching, that's a number that remains fluid -- in a frozen sense.
"Years past, we started out dryer than average this time of year, and came out with average, or above average," said Gherke.
State water officials tell ABC7 News that even though we are below average now, in a few hours we could be above exceedingly in the year. So we are going to wait, we are going to see and the snow is getting heavy. #
http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/state&id=5869712
####
No comments:
Post a Comment